By Ahsen Khan

As the recent exchange between Tony Dokoupil and Ta-Nehisi Coates illustrates, there is a deep disconnect between how many White people view Israel versus how people of color view it. Like Mr. Dokoupil, White Americans support Israel to a far greater degree than other demographic groups. This suggests they either do not care or not believe Israel is an apartheid state.

Despite White America’s refusal to admit it, the evidence Israel is a brutal apartheid state is overwhelming and irrefutable. It is not a matter upon which reasonable minds can differ, but an immutable truth.

The term apartheid was first used to describe South Africa’s political system, which was designed to segregate and disenfranchise the country’s Black majority. It has since evolved into a shorthand term to describe any political system designed to oppress and marginalize people based on their race, ethnicity or religion. Based on this definition, several human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem have described Israel as an apartheid state. Israel’s former attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, agreed, saying “I must also conclude that my country has sunk to such political and moral depths that it is now an apartheid regime.” Tamir Pardo, the former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, put it best when he explained, “in a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state.”

Mr. Pardo’s description succinctly gets to the heart of the issue. Israel is the de facto political and military authority over the West Bank and the 2.8 million Palestinians who live there. These people have been forced to live under Israeli military law for nearly six decades while the roughly 450,000 Jewish settlers living among them are governed under an Israeli civil code that gives them greater rights and due process protections. Israel is an apartheid state by virtue of the different set of laws governing Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank. To suggest otherwise would be like denying segregation existed in America because it was limited to the South. It is a nonsensical argument grounded in racist delusions, not facts.

As Mr. Coates explained, apartheid systems are inherently evil regardless of the context that led to their creation. As such, White America’s defense of apartheid Israel is indefensible. It also shows how little White people learned from their own dark history of racial injustice.

Over the years, America has given a nation that is very similar to Nazi Germany on the ideological spectrum $260 billion, which it used to build one of the most powerful militaries in the world. It boasts a fleet of deadly tanks, stealth fighters and drones as well as advanced cyber warfare and intelligence capabilities. As Israel’s Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu admitted when he suggested using one against Gaza’s defenseless people, it also possesses a formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons.

America’s leaders are so blinded by racism and hubris they believe giving Israel the means to slaughter nearly 17,000 Palestinian children and threaten its Muslim neighbors with annihilation will cement its place among them. Nothing could be further from the truth. By empowering it to commit such horrific crimes, America has only made Israel less secure by destroying any chance for a durable peace with the Palestinians or the wider Muslim world.

The push to create a homeland for Jews by conquering Palestine and subjugating its people was an incredibly short-sighted idea born of desperation. It essentially forced Jews out of the fire and into the frying pan by creating the conditions for perpetual war between them and the Muslim world. As the famous Zionist slogan, “a land without a people, for a people without a land” shows by the way it so brazenly erases the very existence of the Palestinians, it was also rooted in overtly racist values. Instead of forcing Germany to pay for its crimes by carving one of its states out as a homeland for Jews after WW2, the West collectively decided to force Palestinians to pay for its sins. Due to the inherently illogical and immoral perspectives that led to its creation, Israel’s path towards a long and prosperous future in the Muslim world was always tenuous.

Israel’s leaders responded to their precarious position by pursuing a strategy of maintaining total military dominance over the Palestinians and their Muslim neighbors. Buoyed by their destruction of Gaza and decapitation of Hezbollah, they probably believe their strategy is working. But that only proves the depths of their delusions.

The past year has proven the limits of this strategy. Even after spending decades arming it to the teeth, America has been forced to provide its ally near daily shipments of ammunition, almost $18 billion in emergency funding, and naval and air defense assets to augment its missile defense systems. All of which shows that without America’s support, Israel’s strategy is doomed to fail.

Though it may be hard to envision today, America’s days of protecting Israel are slowly coming to an end. Its debt currently sits at $35 trillion and is expected to grow to $54 trillion in just 10 years. The interest payments required to service it consumed a trillion dollars this year alone and are already the second largest line item in the U.S. government’s budget. Like many empires before it, America has overstretched itself, which means retrenchment is inevitable. When that day comes, Israel will be alone among those it has spent decades abusing.

America’s support for Israel is indefensible not just because it is morally repugnant, but because it is counter to Israel’s long-term interests. To put things in historical terms, the last time Europeans took control of the Holy Land, they held it for almost 200 years. Eventually, the egregious nature of their crimes united their Muslim neighbors against them and led to their expulsion. Modern day Israel is only 75-years-old, but, as the growing cooperation between the previously estranged people of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran shows, the vile nature of its actions has already set similar forces in motion. The only way to prevent history from repeating itself is by dismantling the apartheid state built to oppress the Palestinians. For that to happen, White Americans must first stop enabling and Whitewashing its crimes.

The author is a U.S. Navy veteran and attorney who writes about ways to modernize the Muslim world on his blog, www.mirrorsfortheprince.com.